The Camera Phone Megapixel Race Heats Up

There’s been a decent amount of talk lately surrounding the megapixel race on camera phones. At Mobile World Congress, the only cell phone manufacturer to actually show proof of a 12 megapixel phone was Sony Ericsson. That doesn’t mean Sony Ericsson is the only manufacturer in the race, however.

Not long after Sony Ericsson announced its 12.1 megapixel camera phone, codenamed Idou, Jeremy Newing, LG Mobile's head of marketing in the UK, told TechRadar that LG definitely plans to compete in the megapixel race by releasing its own 12 megapixel camera phone. Newing also made sure to mention that it’s important for people to realize that 12MP images will require huge amounts of data, and that it will be harder to do things like send these large files.

As we all know, bigger isn’t always better. Newing agrees, and pointed out that more and more megapixels aren’t going to keep consumers happy. Instead, users are realizing there’s much more to it than just megapixels—they also want respectable lens quality, optical zoom, and other features. Obviously he couldn’t go into great detail, but Newing did say LG has a clear imaging strategy beyond just megapixels. One of the differentiations Newing mentioned was the addition of beauty enhancer and smile shot.

Even though we’re not quite there yet, the idea of packing a 12 megapixel sensor into our phones is enough to peek our interest. Now, if manufacturers could manage to squeeze optical zoom and a few other features into these phones, they just might begin to compete with point and shoot digital cameras, especially the low-end cameras without a lot of additional features. Either way, you can bet the megapixel race isn’t over, especially since the devices have yet to be unleashed to the general public.